When Josh Poletti first walked into Noto Italian Restaurant (5105 Westwood Drive, St. Peters; 636-317-1143), he was just a customer, curious to find out why everyone was making such a fuss about the wildly popular eatery. Blown away by the place, he quickly became a regular and eventually found himself staying one night until 1 a.m., talking shop with the restaurant's co-owner, Wayne Sieve.

That conversation turned into a job offer that now has him working as executive chef alongside Sieve and Sieve's wife, Kendele Noto Sieve, to create a new menu that firmly places Noto in the conversation as one of the top Italian restaurants in the St. Louis metropolitan area.